Chapter Five
When they reached the yard, Rob stowed the archery equipment in his shed. He shooed
the dog back outside, but before he could padlock the big double doors together, Merry
asked, “What else is in there?”
He gestured for her to enter. It was the size of small garage, and Merry crossed the
threshold to peer into the orderly shadows. Most of it was taken up by a Land Rover.
Not a shiny one like a soccer mom would use to shuttle the kids. A good fifteen years
old, she guessed, crusted with dried mud, grass mummified between the tire treads.
“I suppose you would need one of those, to stock up on supplies.” She looked around,
finding no other surprises—lots of firewood, garden tools, bins and buckets.
“Nope,” she said, shutting the door for him. “No pile of dead hikers.”
“Oh dear.” He slipped the lock through its latch. “Have I let you down? Has my creepy
loner cachet taken a nosedive?”
“You can make it up to me with that coffee.”
“Save that assumption for after you’ve tasted it.”
He led her back into the cottage, and they pushed off their boots inside the rear
door.
Merry took a seat at the little kitchen table, thinking there was no more intriguing
creature on earth than this strange man, making her coffee in his wool socks.
So much for this crush being a side effect of the crypto or head injury.
She was perfectly conscious and rested now, and, if anything, her attraction had
gotten worse.
You really ought to reserve those feelings until you know what on earth sent this
man fleeing civilized society to play Davy Crockett.
True. And with Rob more candid this afternoon than she’d yet seen him, it seemed their
coffee date might be the perfect opportunity to do some gentle prying.
Once the fire was stoked and the kettle filled, they moved the table and its chair
to the den area, and Merry took the rocker.
“So,” she said, drawing her knees to her chest.
“So?”
“I’ve met Rob the weird survivalist loner. And Rob the secret archer. And Rob the
nice guy who’s making me coffee, and who slept on his floor so I could steal his bed.”
Ever hopeless with compliments, he turned his attention to his hands.
“What was Rob from back in England like?”
He frowned. “Sort of a miserable git.”
“Being a businessman didn’t suit you, I take it?”
“I can’t say it did. Though I was good at it, at least to start.”
“You said you had a few businesses. What kinds?”
He wiggled a pair of fingers and met her gaze. “Two bars. I opened them with my best
mate from university.”
“Oh, okay. I was trying to picture you in a boardroom or someplace, but that makes
a little more sense. What sort of bars? Trendy?”
“The first was your typical British corner pub—already established. We bought it when
the owner retired, kept it pretty much as it had been, plus basic improvements to
get some younger clientele in the door.” He spoke mainly to the window, with only
an occasional glance at Merry. “It did well. We used the first couple years’ profits
to open a second one. Emphasis on the cocktails and a bunch of upscale starters. My
mate’s pet project, bit posh for my taste. He was onto something, though—that one
did even better than the pub.”
“Sounds like an awfully social pursuit, for a man who’s exiled himself to the top
of a lonely Scottish hill.”
“I, um . . .” He stared off at the mountains, blue eyes somber in the cool, waning
light. “I was going through the motions, I think. Playing at being whoever that man
was. The one who opened those places.”
She nodded. She’d done the same—played the part of the chatty, happy, chubby girl,
the nonthreatening life of the party who’d always lend you a shoulder to cry on, posed
no danger of boyfriend-theft.
“I think lots of us spend our twenties trying on personas,” she offered.
Rob’s brows rose, and he met her eyes squarely.
“I know I got myself jammed in a rut, trying to be everybody’s best friend,” she said.
“Trying to make everyone happy. By the time I was thirty I was like, Jesus. If I’d
charged these people for all the therapy I doled out, I’d be a millionaire by now.”
He smiled.
“And the thing is . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she made the discovery. “I bet they
didn’t even
want
to be happy. I bet they just wanted an audience for their misery.”
“Speaking as a former barman, I can tell you that’s an exceedingly sure bet.”
The kettle began its low wail, and Rob rose to make the coffee. Merry watched as he
spooned grounds into a mesh filter and started the first cup.
“Sugar?” he asked, looking up quick enough to catch her staring.
“No, just black. Thanks.”
After a couple minutes’ steeping, he knocked the grounds into his trash tub and carried
the mugs over. She admired his fingers, wrapped around the handles. Graceful, manly
things. They matched the rest of him, that body with its spare breed of muscularity,
not a pound of excess. God, she envied people like that. People whose bodies made
it look so effortless. Bodies that understood food as fuel, and exercise as a function
of their daily lives. For Merry, food was so much more—a foe and a lover and a friend.
And exercise—until this trip—had been an obligation grudgingly retrofitted into an
otherwise comfortable and sedentary routine.
Those were the girls she’d been most jealous of, growing up—not just the thin, fashionable
ones, but the types who surfed or rock climbed, who lived in such obvious peace with
their bodies. Took
joy
in using their bodies. Mastered them. Merry’s had always felt like a bully. A great,
heavy oaf pinning her to the ground, taunting.
She blew on her steaming coffee and took a taste. “Oh man.”
“Good?”
She hazarded another sip. It had nothing on Blue Bottle, to be sure, but it was strong.
And after two-plus weeks without a decent fix . . . “This is the most amazing coffee
I’ve ever tasted.”
“Much like your next hot shower will be the most amazing one you’ve ever taken.”
“No doubt.” She reveled in the next mouthful. “Oh yeah.”
Rob smirked.
“I had a cup in each of the villages I’ve stopped in. But that was just watery gas-station-type
coffee.” Not like this ambrosia, with its sinful, grimy, coffee-press heartiness.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“You don’t have any secret whiskey squirreled away for celebrations, do you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t, no.”
“Oh well. There’s plenty of that waiting for me in Inverness. Coffee’s exotic enough
for now. Though if you thought I was chatty and annoying before . . .”
Rob made a shifty face, one that told her that yes, he had thought that, but felt
poorly about it now.
She laughed. “It’s okay. I know how I am. Any time there’s a silence I immediately
start stuffing words into it.”
“Don’t be offended if I don’t invite you to come deer-stalking, then.”
“Fine. I’ll stick to tree-stalking. Easier to chase.”
“The chase is the best part.”
That gave her pause. Rob struck her as many things, but a bloodthirsty pursuer was
not one of them. She wondered if hunting brought a wicked gleam to his eye . . . or
if he approached deer with the same measured, anxious steps as he had her. Then she
wondered, how might he approach a woman? One he had designs on? Nervous and cagey?
Hopefully not. She tried to imagine him making a move on
her
. Would she even recognize it? Was he making one now?
“Did you get hit on much, when you were behind a bar?” she asked.
A lopsided sort of grin, revealing that teeth did indeed live behind those lips, and
a nice set at that. “Not especially. Though I’ve never been the sharpest when it comes
to picking up on feminine signals.”
Are you gay?
Merry seriously doubted it. She’d been honing her gaydar for thirty-one years, and
in the Castro of all places. Gay Mesopotamia. Rob didn’t register even the faintest
blip.
“Women don’t make it easy,” she offered. “Men think they’re smooth, the way they approach
girls, but women flirt, like, four levels below the surface of what they’re actually
saying or doing.”
“We don’t stand a chance.”
When’s the last time you kissed a woman? Months? Years?
“I’m not quite as good as my peers with that stuff,” Merry said. “I’m kind of shy
around guys.”
He shot her a dry look, that expression saying,
You could have bloody well fooled me.
“Or I was,” she corrected. A hundred pounds ago. “I’m a late bloomer. This whole walking-across-Scotland
thing . . . I wouldn’t have done this last year. I’m trying to find my balls, I guess.
You know. Be more adventurous, before I wake up and discover I’m fifty.”
“I’d say you’re on your way. Three weeks hiking, on your own? That’s farther than
most people take themselves.”
Though not as far as Rob had taken
him
self. Straight out of polite society. And permanently, it seemed.
They sipped their coffees in companionable silence for a while. Merry was pleased
she could sit with him this way, only the slightest bit tempted to plaster over the
peace with chatter. With some people, you could almost guess what they were thinking
during these wordless stretches, but not Rob, not now. His face was as placid as a
lake on a breezeless day, same as he’d looked during target practice, before his audience
had arrived. Still waters. He did seem the type to run deep, and she wondered what
thoughts were coursing behind those sad blue eyes.
After he drained his mug, Rob stood. “I have a few things to tend to.”
You always do.
“Need help?”
“No. You take it easy. I’ll make dinner in a couple hours. Nap ’til then if you can,
if your head’s still hurting . . . Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Hang on.” He left her, disappearing into his bedroom, returning a moment later with
something black in his hand.
“You should borrow this, while you’re here.” He held it out—a late-model eBook reader.
“Oh ho!” Merry made grabby hands at him. “I
knew
you had books around here somewhere. Though I hadn’t expected this . . .” She pushed
the little list button and was rewarded with a library of nearly three hundred titles.
“Wow. You’re voracious.”
Rob smiled at that, turning her insides to butter. He tucked his hands in his pockets.
“I’ve probably only read a few dozen so far. But when I came out here, I loaded it
with every classic I recognized the name of. All those books we tell ourselves we’ll
get around to reading.”
She scanned the first twenty titles. “Awesome. And how surprisingly tech-savvy of
you.”
“I’m a hermit, not a Luddite. And that was far easier than lugging hundreds of paperbacks.”
“What happens when the battery dies?”
“I’ve got a travel charger, for the Land Rover.”
“Oh, of course. Clever you. Thanks.”
He shrugged. “Figured you must be sick of the view out that one window by now.”
So he wanted her to borrow this . . . He wanted her to be entertained, and comfortable.
So did that mean she was welcome to stay another day, perhaps?
She wouldn’t say no. The wound at her temple didn’t frighten her as it had yesterday.
She’d ditched the bandage, and the pain had faded to a dull ache, rising in the occasional
crescendo, then receding almost to nothing for minutes at a time. She didn’t feel
right
, but the discomfort was no longer urgent.
“I’ll let you relax,” Rob said, excusing himself to the bedroom once more. He reappeared
with a tee shirt and towel in his hand and headed for the back hall. She watched him
go, each and every step, until he disappeared.
She stroked the velvety rubber corners of the eReader. Secretly, she hoped Rob would
invite her to stay for an extra
week
, then make a move on her, but that probably wasn’t happening. She couldn’t spare
the time, anyway—each day she lingered here was a day stolen from her visit to Inverness.
And Rob surely couldn’t afford to keep pumping his energy and resources into uninvited
houseguests. Winter was on its way. He must have a million things to do. And three
hundred books to read.
Too bad. She’d have liked to have gotten to know him better. He was easily the most
interesting person she’d met in years.
* * *
Rob grabbed a washcloth and a bar of soap from a shelf by the back door, tossed them
and the towel and the shirt in a big metal basin, and hugged it to his chest as he
exited. Usually he bathed in the morning—more bracing than a coffee—but he felt the
urge now. Plus . . . He was avoiding Merry again. And she could probably guess as
much.
Just a quick wash. You’ll have all evening to fumble through awkward conversations.
Were they so awkward, though? The strange thing was, he was beginning to rather enjoy
the woman’s company. But it had been so long, and he was so thoroughly shit at socializing . . .
The urge to run away kept trumping the draw of human interaction.
But one thing had become perfectly clear today.
He was lonely.
Frowning at the realization, he dropped the basin before the pump. He constructed
his usual pyramid on a flat slate paving stone, off the dirt—T, towel, washcloth,
and the bar of soap on top.
The pump gurgled to life with a croaking wail. Rob pushed the handle again, again,
until water was tumbling into the basin, clean and clear and icy cold.
He’d convinced himself he wasn’t lonely, these past two years. That the scenery and
the friendship of an unnamed dog were all he needed. All he
wanted
.
So often, we tell ourselves we don’t want or need things, simply because we’re rubbish
at them.
He’d been rubbish at friendships as a child, and so contented himself with solitary
pursuits and the coveted company of his brother, when it was offered. He’d discovered
he was rubbish with girls as well, some years later. They’d made it plain they didn’t
want him, and so he’d decided perhaps he didn’t want them, either.